The Small World of M-75

by Ed M. Clinton, Jr.

For all his perfection and magnificence he was but a baby with a new found freedom in a strange and baffling world . . . .

Like sparks flaring briefly in the darkness, awareness first came to him. Then, there were only instants, shocking-clear, brief: finding himself standing before the main damper control, discovering himself adjusting complex dials, instants that flickered uncertainly only to become memories brought to life when awareness came again.

He was a kind of infant, conscious briefly that he was, yet unaware of what he was. Those first shocking moments were for him like the terrifying coming of visual acuity to a child; he felt like homo neandertalensis must have felt staring into the roaring fury of his first fire. He was homo metalicus first sensing himself.

Yet—a little more. You could not stuff him with all that technical data, you could not weave into him such an intricate pattern of stimulus and response, you could